Jennifer J. Walker

P.E., D.WRE, CFM, M.ASCE

Watearth, Inc.

Houston, TX

August 2009

About

Jennifer J. Walker, P.E., D.WRE, CFM, President and Founder of Watearth, Inc. is one of the first 500 engineers to receive the Diplomate, Water Resources Engineer certification (D.WRE) from the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers. She is a Certified Flood Plain Manager and a licensed Professional Engineer in multiple states.

Ms. Walker is a nationally-recognized leader in stormwater management, large-scale and regional detention solutions, green infrastructure, and Low Impact Development (LID) and has been involved with projects across the nation. Walker's expertise also includes hydrologic and hydraulic analyses, drainage master plans, stormwater quality BMPs, stormwater modeling, geomorphology and sediment transport, as well as green infrastructure solutions for stormwater treatment. Walker's stormwater/water management experience includes transportation, residential, commercial, and large-scale public projects.

Jennifer has authored and presented numerous hydrologic and hydraulic papers at statewide, nationwide, and international conferences. She regularly teaches multi-day seminars nationwide and is a sought-after speaker and trainer. Walker has trained thousands in storm water management and green infrastructure topics and is skilled in providing practical training on complex technical topics. She also provides instruction to the general public in LID topics through nonprofit organizations.

Ms. Walker is a certified Permaculturist with a decade of hands-on construction and maintenance experience with LID for small-scale residential applications. She has hands-on experience with a multitude of LID micro-concepts, such as: harvesting rainwater, constructing bioretention/rain gardens, altering time of concentrations, amending soil, disconnecting impervious cover, removing impervious cover, and recycling gray water.

Ms. Walker has been a Diplomate since September 2008.

Fun Facts

Most fun class while in school:

Hydrology as an undergraduate and a marketing course as a graduate student.

Most fun project you worked on:

The project that sticks-out in my mind was the Royal Oaks Houston development and golf course. This was a high-profile development project with a professional-level golf course. We over-excavated the golf course to create topography on the flat site and provided detention within interconnected lakes and ponding areas. It was a lot of fun to model the interconnected detention and create inundation maps to determine the length of time the course would be out-of-play for various design storm events.

Favorite song & artist:

My favorite water-related song is Breaking Up the Concrete by legendary rock band The Pretenders. It's the perfect theme song for sustainable stormwater management with it's topic of removing impervious cover!